Budget and Oversight of Public Elections Committee
2009 2008 2007 2006
ELECTIONS COMMISSION
BUDGET AND OVERSIGHT OF PUBLIC ELECTIONS COMMITTEE
City Hall, Room 034
Minutes of the Meeting Held
Thursday, July 13, 2006
1. Call to Order and Roll Call. Chairperson Gerard Gleason called the meeting to order at 4:05 pm. PRESENT: Commissioners Gerard Gleason, Jennifer Meek, Richard P. Matthews, Deputy Director Linda Tulett and Deputy City Attorney Miguel Màrquez.
- Discussion and possible action concerning impacts of current and/or proposed changes to Federal, State or Municipal elections codes upon operations of the Department of Elections or understanding of the elections process by voters. [Gleason] Commissioner Gleason explained that this would be a recurring agenda item for the Committee.
- Commissioner Matthews reported that he had no information on the progress of Supervisor McGoldrick’s proposal for elections to be held only in even-numbered years. Deputy City Attorney Màrquez reported that the proposal was reported out of the Rules Committee without recommendation and was introduced to the Board of Supervisors yesterday and will be heard on Tuesday, July 18, 2006.
Commissioner Gleason said that the Committee invited Supervisor Elsbernd to this meeting because he had read Monday, in the newspaper, that the Supervisor was introducing a amendment to the Municipal Elections Code to require mailing of the VIP (Voter Information Pamphlet) to each registered San Francisco voter at least 29 days before an election.
Supervisor Elsbernd said that his ordinance, although it may appear simple, may be more complicated when seen from the DoE’s point of view. He said that he wants to work with the Department in finding a solution to the complaints from voters about receiving their VIPs only days before the June 2006 primary election. He said that currently the Municipal Elections Code reads that the mailing must happen 10 days before elections. The Supervisor advised the Committee that he did not get his own VIP until 3 days before the June election and that his office received many calls from voters with the same complaint. This, he said, gives rise to conspiracy theories by candidates who can claim that the late arrival of VIPs cost them the election.
The Supervisor said that it seems “odd …that a voter guide would go out subsequent to the date when people are already voting.” He reminded the Committee that early voting begins 29 days prior to an election, and that early voters should be as educated as election day voters. He said that these were the two purposes behind his proposal.
Supervisor Elsbernd said that when he mentioned his proposal to the Board, five Supervisors offered to co-sponsor it. Further, he said that this is his preferred option but he is willing to listen if the Department has another option.
Commissioner Meek asked the Supervisor if he had been made aware of the problems which resulted in the late mailing of the VIPs. The Supervisor said that as election day was nearing and his office received complaints from voters, he called the Director who was very responsive and explained the problems with the VIP. However, explaining this to his constituents was not as easy to do. The Supervisor said that he understood the reasons for the delay, but he didn’t want to ever be put in the position of explaining delays to constituents again.
Another complaint the Supervisor heard from voters was why they got three VIPs per household in the mail. Commissioner Gleason replied that the state does a combined mailing, and the City must do one that contains the sample ballot. Deputy Director Tulett explained that each VIP has an application for an absentee ballot and each voter has to apply for her/his own absentee ballot on the back cover with a bar code that assists in the mailing process, and this is why each voter gets a separate VIP.
Commissioner Gleason reminded the Committee and the Supervisor that the current Municipal Elections Code applied the 21-day mailing rule only to Municipal and General Elections and the June election was a Primary Election which is not mentioned in the Municipal Elections Code, so the California State Elections Code period applies, and that the discrepancy does need to be clarified in the code. He said that he was aware of conspiracy theories and that this is the reason the Department has an Elections Plan – to make all the election information public. The situation for the June Election was very unusual and voters were calling the Commission as well. The situation was not acceptable and must be corrected.
Commissioner Gleason said that the problem may be that the City used to have “Election Day”, and now it has “Election Season”. The City currently operates Early Voting and Absentee Voting under and elections code that still treats this period as an “accommodation”. However, more and more people are choosing other times and manners of voting during an election. The Department is still required to be operating under elections codes geared for the time frame of “Election Day.” The turn around for producing the voting material is extremely fast. The Commissioner produced a copy of the VIP for San Mateo County, and then placed beside it the VIPs produced by San Francisco in the same election. The difference in size was very apparent – with the San Francisco material being greater than ten times the size of that of San Mateo. He reminded everyone that some of the arguments are handwritten submissions that the Department must decipher and reproduce. If the Supervisor’s proposal were law in time for the November 2006 election, that would mean all this work would have to be done by October 9, 2006. Commissioner Gleason said this would be very difficult to complete in that time. Additionally, the Commissioner reminded the Supervisor that San Francisco shares the printing plant that does VIPs for other counties. In the past, the City has been able to get at the front of the queue by getting all its material to the printers under their deadline. For the June 2006 election, because of the problems with the equipment changes, the City likely wound up at the back of the queue. Commissioner Gleason said that by adding additional “layers” of election code onto the Department and asking them to perform with this additional weight (of the Supervisor’s proposal) with the same budget, would be difficult.
Supervisor Elsbernd said that it was not unexpected that the Department of Elections would say that it needed more funds to meet a new responsibility. He said that all Departments say the same thing. Further, he said that if the Department and Commission feel that this ordinance is not the way to go, then there needs to be “some kind of clear plan explaining exactly what happens and the exact efforts as to how it’s never going to happen again,” and said he would be open to other suggestions for changes to the code.
Deputy Director Tulett said that, in her personal opinion, more staff is needed. For example, she said that in San Mateo County there is one manager over the VIP and another manager over the official ballot. In San Francisco, we have one person to do both of those jobs and also oversees the Ballot Simplification Committee. If there’s going to be a shortened time to accomplish this, especially with 199 paid arguments, we are not going to be able to meet the proposed deadlines in the proposed code.
Commissioner Meek stated that decreasing the time a business has to do a task, usually ends up meaning there is a need to increase resources. There’s no way to do this, unless someone works overtime. She said that asking that the DoE’s budget be increased to accomplish this is not out of the question or asking for too much. One other possibility might be that instead of treating election day as the final deadline, we could treat the 29th day before an election as the final deadline – then all work has to be scheduled 29 days earlier.
Commissioner Matthews said that he agreed with Commissioner Meek’s assessment and added that all of the Commission is in agreement with the Supervisor’s motive because everyone wants voters to have the VIP as early as possible to make an informed decision when their vote is cast. He reminded the Supervisor that the problems with the VIP for the June Primary Election was a “once in a blue moon kind of thing” where the DoE was pursuing a contract with one vendor of our voting equipment and had to pull the plug at a critical point and go a different route. This caused a delay in getting the ballot designed and this was the single biggest reason why the VIP was delayed. He asked the Deputy Director if this was a correct statement.
Deputy Director Tulett said it was a combination of problems. The DoE also had two different voting systems, one of which was the AutoMARK, which required a different ballot layout. And she reminded the Commission and Supervisor that this was done by ONE person. The AutoMARK vendor gave incorrect instructions for the ballot layout, and ultimately the Department had to do all the layout work which took hours and hours to listen to files. Ms. Tulett said that some of these “wrinkles” will have been ironed out by this November’s election.
Commissioner Matthews said that everything, in his mind, should be on the table for review regarding the VIP, including if paid arguments were more in line with the “3299 jurisdictions of America where (other than in the state of Oregon) there are not unlimited paid arguments.”
Supervisor Elsbernd asked what the Commission saw as an appropriate timeline to get back to him with an explanation of what went wrong, what doesn’t work with the proposed ordinance and what steps will be taken to make sure this doesn’t happen in the future.
Deputy Director Tulett said that the Director would be back on Monday and he hasn’t seen the proposed legislation. She asked for a week or so to gather information and produce a document for the Supervisor.
Commissioner Matthews called attention to the last line of the proposal in which the wording “general or special municipal” before the word “election” is stricken.
He explained that the DoE runs a number of non-public elections and that the wording being removed would mean that the code would cover those elections as well, that is, that VIPs for those elections would need to go to every voter.
Deputy Director Tulett explained that there is a possibility that a state law may be implemented that would greatly effect the production of ballots for a general or primary election. No jurisdiction will be allowed to translate a state measure into a language unless it comes from the Secretary of State. This will cause further delays in finalizing ballots in the future.
Public Comment. Chris Jerdonek said that he supports Supervisor Elsbernd’s proposed amendment.
- Discussion and possible action to evaluate the approved Election Plan used for the June 6, 2006 Consolidated Primary Election. Commissioner Matthews said that wants the Election Plan to improve with each election to more fully explain more areas and processes of the election. For example, he would like the plan for November to explain how the one percent tally is chosen. Ultimately, he would like the purpose of the plan to be “putting everything out there for the public.” This would help when there are problems during a particular election’s process because the Department and the Commission could point to the Election Plan and show what the process is and that it was announced in advance. He said that the more processes that can be included in the plan the better. It should be a civic textbook for the voter, the candidate and campaigns on how the City’s elections are run.
Commissioner Gleason agreed and added that the Charter states that the Elections Commission must approve a written plan. The plan is helpful to the Department because it explains the process to voters. The Commissioner said that during the review of the November 2005 election he had stated that he wanted to go over the Election Plan with the Director, with the approval of the Commission, to see how well it worked and make improvements, but he never did this. Commissioner Gleason said that the Department does a very good job of administering the election, that is, it is very open to explaining the process that occurs and that all disclosures to other departments about what goes on during an election should be made public as well. He recalled that many of the complaints about ballots during the June Primary Election were due to “user errors.” Having more information in the Election Plan would enable the Department to refer persons with concerns to that part of the plan that would explain the process.
Commissioner Gleason said that he wants to work with the Department on the Election Plan and make it more of “a disclosure document.” Additionally, he would like the Department to have more of a buy-in to the plan, because it is valuable to the Department.
Commissioner Matthews, addressing the Deputy Director, said that he doesn’t want the Election Plan to appear as a “burden” to the Director’ s Office. The Commission’s goal is for it to be helpful when there are inevitable questions or glitches. He reminded everyone that the Department presents the Election Plan and the Commission approves it, although the Commission has, over the years, provided a template that explains much of the process and the Department has added more information, it should keep adding information. Ultimately, the Election Plan is the Department’s document and must reflect the reality of the election, as much as possible.
Commissioner Meek asked the Deputy Director when the Election Plan was posted on the website.
Commissioner Gleason said that he believed that it is stated in the Commission’s template that the plan be submitted to the Commission 80 to 55 days prior to the election but there was leeway given for contingencies. However, the final date for completion of the plan was the ten-day period when the central ballot count notice is supposed to be published. The Commission approved the recent plan in late April or early May. Commissioner Gleason said the plan should be on the website, at the Department’s front desk and at the Main Library.
Commissioner Meek suggested that the Commission establish a policy or process which gives a time that the Election Plan is to be delivered to the Commission, even if it’s in draft form, so that at least it is available to the public on the website as a draft. She said she would like to see past Election Plans archived on the website as well.
Commissioner Gleason said that the hope of the Commission was that there would not be a burden on the Department and that this is the reason for the template in which dates could be changed for each election, and there’s a section for “new and unprecedented procedures”.
Commissioner Meek said that the Commission requested that the plan be on the website in advance of elections, but this has not been done.
Deputy Director Tulett reminded the Commission that some processes are not decided until weeks before an election, but a deadline is a good idea, with some things added as they become a part of the process.
Public Comment. Chris Jerdonek said that he has not ever found a copy of the Election Plan on the DoE website and that he has asked for it at the Front Desk and that no one there had a copy. He suggested that the Election Plan be in two parts: Part One which is consistent from election to election; and Part Two with items that are unique to each election. This, he said, would make it easier for voters to read because they wouldn’t need to re-read the consistent processes.
Commissioner Matthews asked the Deputy Director if the Election Plan was ever put on the website. Ms. Tulett responded that, to her knowledge, it was not.
Commissioner Gleason MOVED that the review of the performance of the Election Plan and suggestions for improvement be discussed at the next Commission meeting with the positive recommendation that the Department followed the Election Plan for the June Primary Election, This MOTION was SECONDED by Commissioner Matthews. The Roll Call Vote was UNANIMOUS.
4. Discussion and possible action on implementing electronic email lists and
increasing available material on Election Department and Election Commission websites. Commissioner Meek asked that the wording in this item be changed to eliminate “implementing electronic email lists” because this would be a day-to-day task of the Department, and be moved to the next meeting of the Budget and Oversight of Public Elections Committee meeting. She said when problems occur, that information stating the problem should be put on the website. An example would be that the VIP is going out later than originally proposed. This would reduce some of the complaints from voters.
Commissioner Meek said that she would like to put together information for possible action regarding increasing material on the Department’s website and present it at the next Committee meeting.
Public Comment. Chris Jerdonek said it would be helpful to have information on the front page of the website that would lead visitors to all the information that is available.
ACTION: This item was CARRIED OVER to the next Committee meeting.
5. Public Comment. Rodney Hauge said he was a candidate in the upcoming November election, gave a brief history of this legal background in constitutional law, and his experience as a poll worker. He said that he had witnessed and reported electioneering during the last election.
ADJOURNMENT at 5:25 pm.